It is the first week of March. The PIT-8C statement from your broker has arrived, and the deadline for filing PIT-38 falls on 30 April. Two roads lead out of that morning: hand the paperwork to an accounting office, or sit down yourself with the trade history and a spreadsheet. Money is only one of the criteria — time, the risk of getting a number wrong and whether you want to understand your own tax return all matter too. This article compares both options across five criteria: cost, time, error risk, educational value and what happens once a foreign account is involved.

What actually has to be reported?

A private investor reports forex profits as income from money capital, on the PIT-38 form. The rate set by article 30b of the Polish personal income tax act is 19 percent, and it applies not to turnover but to income — revenue minus the costs of earning it. The return is due by 30 April of the year following the tax year; if that date falls on a Saturday or a public holiday, the deadline moves to the next business day.

Anyone trading with a Polish broker receives a PIT-8C statement listing revenue and costs. That is half the work done for you: you copy the figures into the return and check them against your own records. A foreign broker will not issue that document — Polish law does not require it to. In that case the whole calculation is yours: you download the trade history, add up revenue and costs, convert everything into zloty, and only that result goes into PIT-38, with foreign income additionally reported on the PIT/ZG annex.

"An accounting office buys you time and peace of mind, but it does not take away your responsibility for what ends up in the return. The signature under PIT-38 is still yours — which is why, even when you hand the documents to someone else, it pays to understand where the main figures came from." — Jarosław Wasiński, editor-in-chief of MyBank.pl, 2026.

An accounting office — what the fee actually buys

An accounting office takes over the mechanical part of the job: it sorts the statements, converts the currencies, fills in the form and watches the deadline. For someone trading with two or three brokers and closing a few hundred positions a year, that is the difference between one lost afternoon and one short phone call.

The second benefit is less obvious: calm if the tax office asks questions. A good office can explain where every figure in the return came from, and it usually keeps the supporting documentation. If your own statements are scattered across three platforms, that argument weighs more than saving a few hundred zloty.

Fees are negotiated case by case and vary with the number of accounts, the number of trades and the city, so ignore any "standard" rate you read on a forum — ask for a quote up front, before you hand over anything. And ask one control question: has the office handled CFDs or a foreign brokerage account before? Filing employment income is a completely different job from converting several hundred positions at exchange rates from different days.

Doing it yourself — when that is realistic

With one Polish broker and a PIT-8C in hand, filing yourself is genuinely simple. The PIT-38 form is made available in the Twój e-PIT service together with the data your broker submitted, but you still have to review it, complete it where needed and approve it — the system does not do that for you automatically, so the fact that a return "is already there" settles nothing on its own.

The difficulty starts with a foreign account. Every amount in a foreign currency is converted into zloty at the average National Bank of Poland rate from the last business day preceding the day the revenue arose or the cost was incurred. Not the rate on the trade date, and not the broker's own rate — that is the single most common slip in a first self-filed return, and it can move the tax base by several percent. With a hundred positions it means a hundred lookups in the rate tables, unless you build a spreadsheet that pulls them in for you.

The second thing to think through is deductible costs. Under article 30b the deductible side is narrow — essentially the costs of acquiring and disposing of the instruments, such as broker commissions, rather than a VPS subscription, charting software or a trading course. If you are not sure what falls inside that boundary, a self-filed return usually ends with you deducting nothing at all for safety, and paying more than you had to.

The comparison across five criteria

Accounting office against filing it yourself
Direct costOffice: a fee agreed individually, normally rising with the number of accounts and trades · Yourself: nothing beyond your own time
Your timeOffice: collecting the statements plus a short conversation · Yourself: from an hour with a single PIT-8C to an entire afternoon with a foreign account
Risk of errorOffice: lower, but only if it has genuine experience with derivatives · Yourself: highest in the first year, mostly in the currency conversion
What you learnOffice: nothing, unless you ask for the calculations to be explained · Yourself: after one season you understand your own return well enough to repeat it
Foreign accountOffice: takes over the conversions and the PIT/ZG annex · Yourself: doable, but it needs your own spreadsheet of NBP rates

When to hire an accounting office

Krzysztof has been trading for several years and holds two accounts: one with a Polish brokerage house, one with a foreign broker. The first sends him a PIT-8C; the second gives him raw trade history in dollars. At several hundred positions a year the question is no longer whether he could do the arithmetic, but how many evenings he wants to spend on it and how much he trusts his own spreadsheet. In that situation an accounting office usually earns its fee.

An office makes sense above all when you are filing for more than one account, when at least one of them is foreign, when it is your first return and you want to see a correctly completed template, or when you have a loss from earlier years to carry forward — because a loss that is not reported properly simply disappears.

When to file it yourself

Anna is in her second year of trading, uses a Polish broker only, and closes a few dozen EUR/USD positions a year. She receives a PIT-8C, checks the figures against her own records and approves the return. The whole thing takes her an evening — longer the first time, noticeably shorter the next.

Filing yourself is sensible when you have one Polish account and a PIT-8C, when the number of trades is small enough to verify by hand, when you have no losses from previous years and no foreign income to report, and when spreadsheet work does not put you off. If you want to walk through it step by step, the whole procedure is described in the article on how to file forex taxes in practice.

The most common traps in this choice

  • Assuming every accounting office knows derivatives. Most offices handle employment contracts and sole proprietorships day to day, not CFDs. Ask directly about experience with PIT-38 and foreign accounts before you pay — "of course, we will manage" is not an answer.
  • Converting currencies at the wrong rate. What applies is the average NBP rate from the last business day preceding the day the revenue arose or the cost was incurred, not the rate on the trade date and not the rate displayed by your broker. This is the mistake that turns up most often in a first self-filed return.
  • The myth of a compulsory ORD-U form for investors. The ORD-U information on contracts concluded with non-residents applies to the entities listed in the Tax Ordinance Act, not to a private individual reporting capital gains on PIT-38. If someone is selling you a service on the argument that "otherwise there is a penalty for a missing ORD-U", treat that as a reason to verify the claim with a tax adviser or directly with the tax office.
  • Handing over documents without an agreed price. A fee calculated after the fact, by the hour, can be a surprise when there are several hundred trades to process. Agree the rate in advance and in writing.
  • Treating the office as a reason to understand nothing. Responsibility for the content of the return stays with the taxpayer, even when someone else fills it in. Ask for an explanation of where the main figures came from.

What to do before your next filing

  1. Count how many accounts you are actually reporting. Write down every broker with which you closed at least one position last year and mark which of them are Polish entities, and will therefore send you a PIT-8C. If there is even one foreign broker on the list, plan either a visit to an accounting office or a whole free evening for the conversions.
  2. Download the full trade history before the year ends. Some platforms only make reports available for a limited period backwards, and once an account is closed it can be harder still. Save the statement to a file and keep it together with your deposit and withdrawal confirmations.
  3. Convert one trade by hand to see how much work it is. Take any closed position in a foreign currency and find the average NBP rate from the last business day preceding the day the revenue arose. If after two such conversions you know you will never do this for a hundred positions, the decision about the accounting office has just been made for you.
  4. If you go with an office, call in February, not in April. Ask about experience with PIT-38 and foreign accounts, request a quote up front and book a date for handing over the documents. In the last week before the deadline there is often no choice left to make.
  5. Check whether you have a loss from earlier years to use. Look through your returns for previous years and establish whether anything is still available to deduct within the same source of income. If you are not certain how to report it, this is exactly the point at which paying for somebody else's knowledge is worth it.